Using Order Data to Deliver a Stellar Post-Purchase Email Series

Kestrel Lemen

When a customer completes a purchase with you, they’ve just given you the keys to continue your relationship with them. So let’s talk about how you can use this information and what you already know about the customer to perfect your post-purchase email series.

Just like a Swiss Army knife, a good post-purchase series serves many purposes, and when implemented correctly, can be an essential tool for any email marketer’s toolbox. It won’t open a can of soup, but it CAN drive revenue for you all year long.

A great post-purchase series:

Uses order data.

Drives revenue.

Increases visits to your site.

Helps you ‘stand out from the pack.’

Increases brand awareness.

Continues engagement with the customer.

What does a great post-purchase series look like?

Transactional Messages

It all starts with great transactional messages. These messages, such as order confirmations and shipping confirmations, drive serious revenue and give you a great start with a new customer. Capturing the order data from your ecommerce platform is really essential. This data is used to customize the transactional messages, uniquely populating messages per customer. I’ve seen one Bronto customer drive almost a third of their revenue just through transactional messages! The key is having accurate purchase information – identifying what the customer purchased, that the order is confirmed and when the item will be shipped or giving a projected shipping date. Your information in this message should be flawless.

Bounce Back Messages

Bounce back messages are simply messages with a discount that go out right after a purchase. They are meant to encourage future sales. The order data you would need is simply the last purchase date. You can customize with more data, such as the product category or product type, to encourage using the discount toward a similar or complementary item. However, I have seen even a simple bounce back message, with no personalization have a 469% lift in revenue per email over an average message.

Product Review Requests

These requests can serve multiple purposes. The primary purpose it to request a product review but it can also serve as an opportunity to remind someone to use their bounce back coupon, display product recommendations or simply show off top products. Product review request emails with accurate data about the purchased item and a URL to the product page with a place to leave the review make the user experience more relevant and give you a better chance of receiving those much-wanted reviews.

Refill/Reorder Reminders

Following up with customers to refill or reorder a product is an essential part of a post-purchase series for industries such as health and beauty and office supplies. The consumer buys a product and will need more in X days. Order data again is essential here because you will need to set up a date-based trigger for the last order date along with the item info that was purchased. Refill/reorder emails have a great success rate since consumers typically see them as helpful. If implemented correctly, they can easily give you another transaction. Everyone wins!

Is a post-purchase series like a welcome series?

Yes, in a way. For purchasers, it’s the ‘honeymoon period’ where you have a chance to show off great customer service, your value statement and increase customer loyalty. However, you are also able to leverage order data and send messages with relevant content.

Why is order data essential?

You can’t trigger a post-purchase series without knowing the last order date, can you? More importantly, order data also ensures that you can customize the messages that are sent out so that they are more relevant and more likely to drive future sales.

What is the single most important thing to remember about your post-purchase series?

Did you get permission from the contact to send them marketing messages? Getting permission in store and/or on your website is essential. If you ruin your deliverability, then it won’t matter how good your post-purchase series is.

These were just a few examples of great post-purchase messages that I’ve seen do well. Which messages have been most successful for you?

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